


death would not be kinder

by GlassRose



Category: Knightfall (TV 2017)
Genre: Catholic Guilt, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Knights Templar and shit, Multi, OH warning tags though, Self-Harm, Templars, basically i felt like Pierre's place in the story was weird, he's catholic during the crusades so, just like, just some spy for the pope? give me more than that!, like the real kind, look i'm not fooling anyone here, man very cute and cries heart-wrenching therefore story happen, so i'm digging at it, too big and too small all at once, who is he
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:55:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22825969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassRose/pseuds/GlassRose
Summary: After Landry guts Pierre, deservedly so, his body refuses to let him die. It falls off a cart of corpses in the woods, where he is found by two poor non-Christians who keep him from death. He no longer knows what his life is meant to be, what temptations he may fall prey to now, now that he is questioning the Pope's lies and the very will of God.But his new friends are kind and good, and nothing like his brothers in the Church. Maybe that's all he ever needed.
Relationships: Pierre (Knightfall)/Original Male Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 11
Kudos: 19





	death would not be kinder

**Author's Note:**

> Couple warnings here, please read:  
> 1\. Pierre refers to himself as a "cr**ple" because of his injuries and I do use the uncensored word in the fic, because that is how they talk in Knightfall and is probably as close to historically accurate as one can get with our modern English vs. Medieval French. I am aware it is not to be freely used in contemporary conversation, and thus the warning.  
> 2\. Although the use of "Jew" as a noun is similarly Not Cool these days, they use it in Knightfall and so does this fic.  
> 3\. Dude is BATHING in wretched Catholic guilt, I mean, he was a papal spy in Templar ranks, he killed a young man who thought he was a friend, he's been used and abused and has lied and used in turn. He has less than charitable thoughts about people of other religions and he thinks about self-harm a lot in the context of self-mortification. This fic has a less than charitable take on the particular brand of Catholicism Pierre would have been practicing.  
> 4\. Timelines in Knightfall seem really fucky, so if mine don't line up either, I don't care!  
> 5\. No I did not heavily research anything at all.

He doesn't die. Death would be kinder than this. He breathes shallowly, hoping for unconsciousness. Hoping God will grant him relief. His body is thrown on a cart and taken to the forest to be burned with all the others. He can't speak, can't groan. Can barely see. Can't tell them he's alive, please finish it, please, make it stop. The blessed moments of blackness are too short, too nothing. He is dying, but it is taking far too long to bear.

Does God want him alive? Is the Pope praying for him? It seems not. He cannot survive these injuries, but he is cursed to linger long enough to suffer.

If his voice worked, he would scream when the cart hits a rock and jostles, and he falls, falls off the cart into the moss and leaves, and blackness comes for him, blessed darkness, please let it all end, please God, take me home.

It doesn't end. He wakes to hushed voices, a woman murmuring, "Why are we rescuing a Templar?"

A man replies. "He was suffering, he was in pain. You know I can't bear it."

"You might've put him out of his misery."

"Do not tease me, love, you know I can't. Besides, perhaps once he mends, it will not be a terrible thing for a Templar to feel indebted to us. Or at the very least, friendly. He's awake," he says quite suddenly, and a gentle pressure on Pierre's chest keeps him from trying to move. "Lie still, my friend," the man says kindly. "Your injuries are grave. I am using what I can to keep you alive, but it may be some time yet before you are out of danger."

"Raise his head so he can drink," the woman says, exasperated. Their figures are a blur in the flickering firelight. His head is lifted, and a soft bundle of fabric keeps it raised as sweet water trickles into his parched mouth. He chokes at first, but manages to swallow. Every breath is agony. A cool wet cloth soothes his forehead, and he closes his eyes again, and drifts away.

He wakes again, and the sun is out. He can move his head and arms now. He tries to speak, but only a croak comes out. The woman comes back and kneels by him. "Water?"

He grunts. She sets a flask between his lips and tips it slowly so he doesn't choke.

"Is the pain bad?" she asks.

"Yes," he grits out.

"I told Tristran it would be kinder to make it quick, but he can't do that. He's too soft-hearted. It's why I love him." She presses the wet cloth to his forehead again, and this time uses it to clean his face. "Have you a name, Templar?"

"I'm…" He breathes. It is painful, but not as much as before. "I'm no Templar."

"No? What are you, then? Dressed as Templar initiate but not one?"

"I…" This woman holds his life in her hands. He is not going to confess being a spy, nor to working for the Pope, as her dark features suggest Jewish heritage. Though that is but a guess, he realizes. "I am nothing," he says, and it doesn't even feel like a lie now.

"Well," she says, "does Nothing have a name?"

He thinks he should hold that close too, but he doesn't. He is nothing and no one, and his name is common. "Pierre."

"Pierre," she says, and it's kind. He cannot now return to Rome, he thinks. Even if he survives these injuries, he will be useless, moreso than Gawain. He is far too young to be a cripple, he is not so highly trained that he could teach, and he may never walk again.

But.

He has one chance to claw his life back, and it all depends on the Pope granting a boon. Has he not given everything to carry out His Holiness' orders? Surely Boniface would...surely the Pope will…

Pierre is thinking in fairy tales. The Pope took the cup intending to use it to launch a crusade. A bloody crusade to take back the Holy Land, because that ended so well last time. He is a kind man, but a steely one, devoted to his position. He will not let one of his servants drink from the Grail. He did not even agree that Gawain ought to have a chance.

No. There is no hope, and he will likely never be physically able enough to take it through force or cunning. He is worthless to Boniface now, and God has turned from him. Perhaps God truly favors Landry and the Templars.

His life amounts to nothing more than a fool's merry jest, and he is burning with fever.

The man returns and hands the woman a cup. "It is ready."

She sets it to Pierre's lips. "You must drink this. It will help burn out the infection."

He drinks. It is foul. The day is pain and the night is worse. He knows he is fever-mad but he cannot stop crying and shouting at ghosts. Shouting at Gawain. At Tancrede. At Landry, who killed him. At bloody Pope Boniface, who speaks for God and whom, conveniently, God always supports.

And then it is morning, and Tristran is tipping water down his throat, and the fever is breaking. "I think you will live," Tristran says cheerfully.

"And I will be a cripple. This was no kindness."

"Yes it was," Tristran says blithely. "Will you return to the Templars?"

Pierre's gut aches and he stops himself from reaching for it. "I am no Templar. I never was."

"Forgive me. Let me put this a different way. Will you return to anyone at all? Have you anywhere to go?"

"No," Pierre admits, and his heart is empty where once God filled it. But perhaps even that was always a delusion. "I am alone." He knows the confession is dangerous. Tristran and the woman might decide he has no value to them now.

"Fortunate for you, then, that we have an extra bedroll. Now, you need to eat something or you will not heal." Tristran brings him a bowl of soup and helps him to sit up.

"I have no s-strength," Pierre stammers, hating how dependent he is on this stranger's help.

"Not to worry. Lean against me." Tristran is surprisingly strong for his small frame, and he holds Pierre up, a sturdy, warm chair back. Pierre cries out in pain, and Tristran's hands run over his arms and shoulders. "You're all right," he murmurs. "Eat, now. Much as you can."

Pierre obeys, lifting the spoon to his mouth. It is a pleasant enough rabbit soup, if not very flavorful. In Rome he ate well. In Paris, well enough. Here in the countryside, rabbit soup with roots and little salt. Something rustles the leaves nearby and Pierre notices a large mare for the first time. She's brown with a star on her left side.

The woman returns as Pierre is eating. "You're up," she says, a smile breaking over her face. "It pleases me to see you well enough to eat. We are lucky it didn't rain."

"Indeed," Pierre says slowly. "Have you no home?"

"Only each other." She doesn't seem bothered. "We may yet find one. For now, the road is enough."

He finishes the soup. "You never gave me your name."

"True, I did not." She takes his bowl and fills it again, this time eating from it herself. "It is Esther," she says eventually.

"I cannot possibly frighten you in this state," Pierre says.

"You do not. But outside of a community, and now that the Jews have been expelled from Paris, it is not so easy to share my name as it is for a blue-eyed man named Pierre."

"I understand." Tristran has not yet let him down, and he feels sick with guilt in the moment he lets himself think he does not want the man to let go of him. There is a reason he became a soldier for the Church. Now he has nothing to stop him from his sick, perverted inclinations.

Or else he's wounded, feverish, and recovering, and nothing more. When he regains his strength, he will not give in to the dark thoughts. And Tristran is married to Esther, so--

Wait. Are they?

He doesn't actually know.

"Are you just going to stay like that all day?" Esther says, amusement dancing in her dark eyes.

"Oh, I don't know," Tristran replies. "He's not so heavy."

"But I get the good view."

"Don't make the poor man uncomfortable, Es. He's already half dead."

Pierre's knee twinges and he bites his cheek. "What's so good about it?" he mutters.

Esther isn't coy. "Call me a traitor, but I like those beautiful blue eyes of yours."

It's been so, so long since anyone called him beautiful. He looks up to see her game, but her eyes are open, her smile flirtatious but genuine.

It feels wrong and good at once, and Pierre wishes he were dead.

Fate is not on his side. He lives. His rescuers coax him to eat some more soup and lay him back down to sleep.

The next few days pass much the same. Tristran helps him relieve himself and both tend to his wounds. Pierre's Templar initiate armor and clothes are wrapped up and placed by the large oak near the fire. Esther takes a lute and rides the mare, Llamrei, out, returning late in the evenings with bread, wine, and fresh herbs. His wounds heal slowly, and the two keep a careful check on them, and on his body temperature.

After two weeks, they let him try to walk. It's painful. His leg is damaged from the arrow, and he can only go a few steps. But he can sit up now, and nothing is festering. Esther cuts down a sapling and starts carving it into a walking stick.

"Why help me? Why do all this for me?" Pierre finally asks them as they sit around the fire and share dinner that night.

"Pretty eyes," Esther says, and Tristran flicks her arm.

"You needed help," Tristran says. "I couldn't leave you to die in agony."

Pierre thinks of the men he has left to die in agony, the lies he has told, the murders he has committed on behalf of God's chosen representative on Earth and says nothing. A Jew and a man he suspects is not a Christian found a stranger in Templar armor near death and have spent their meager resources and their time and feelings to save his life and shelter him, because they could. Because they wanted to. Because it was right.

To live a life where good and evil are so simple is quite appealing. And how can Pierre think the Pope, who ordered him to kill the few remaining Templars just to shut them up, is better than that? When the band they were going to slaughter was two warriors, a healer, an old woman, and three initiates? Friends, almost. But he put it aside to serve his master. To serve God.

But if politics had made Boniface the Pope, who is to say what God wants, and if the Pope and God even agree?

"I was a spy," he confesses, and they are not surprised.

"I gathered," Esther said airily. "It did not seem to go well for you. Those whip scars look new."

"They used me to draw out a murderer," Pierre says, and realizes how bitter he is now. He can survive pain, has survived it often enough, but to be used in that way by people he was meant to trust--now that has been festering. Perhaps he has no right to feel that way, as a liar and spy himself, but he does.

A lot of things have been festering.

"Did they abandon you?" asks Tristran. "Your people? Your masters?"

"No," Pierre says. "But they will, if I return."

"Perhaps they have enemies."

"None I could turn myself over to. I would be executed. I might deserve that."

"That calls to mind a rule we have," Tristran says. "I know you Christians have guilt piled on, but we do not permit self-mortification here. Especially after all that work we did. No flagellation. None."

Pierre frowns. "I don't even have a whip."

"It's not all physical."

"You should stay with us," Esther cuts in. "If you have no one else, then you are free."

"I fear I cannot share your optimism," Pierre says. "I have made dangerous enemies."

"Cruel ones? Enemies who would murder a injured man and innocents near him?"

Pierre considers. Landry will kill him, most likely, if he learns Pierre is alive, but he is slow to anger and would not harm Esther and Tristran. The Brotherhood, however… well, he doesn't know. Right now he is an injured man with no allies and no loyalties, and no information worth anything. He might never recover completely. "No," he says at last. "I suppose not."

"When you're better, we can travel."

He doesn't push Esther away when she rolls against him at night.

He doesn't push Tristran away either.

He finally asks. "Are you two not lovers? Or married?"

"We are lovers," Tristran says.

Esther is more bold. "We love each other, but understand, Pierre, we have room in our hearts. I do not want you to feel you are being toyed with. You are not."

That is far worse than he expected. "You are not a Christian, are you?" he asks Tristran.

"I am not really anything," Tristran says freely. "My parents were Cathars. I prefer to develop my own values instead of adhering to a doctrine created by others."

"I see. It is said that many Cathars are sodomites."

"Does that upset you, Christian? Do you think God looks down upon those who find love with their own kind?"

Pierre grinds his teeth and clenches his fists. "He turns away."

"Why?"

"The Church--the--" He digs his fingers into his knees and swallows. "It's wrong. It's a sin against nature."

"Why?"

"I don't need to question God's will."

"Shouldn't you? How do you know it's God's will? Who is harmed?"

Pierre blinks back tears. He wishes he had never said a word about it. "My s-soul," he stutters, and Tristran puts a gentle hand on his.

"Or perhaps," Esther says kindly, "the Church finds useful scapegoats in undesirable populations as a means to control the people."

"No," Pierre insists. "It's not true. The Church is--" His throat catches painfully. "I joined the Church so I wouldn't--and I can't go back now, I--I know I'm wrong, I'm sick, but I've kept myself from that sin and I can't…" He's suddenly angry at these people who have been so kind only to use him, to destroy him. "You will not tempt me!"

"Pierre," she says. "Do you not deserve some measure of happiness?"

The tears stream freely down his cheeks now and he can't look at her. "No," he says, like a confession.

"They get trapped by self-flagellation," Tristran sighs. "They're so hard to save."

"You don't know the things I've done," he sobs, but he doesn't push Tristran's hand away, and he lets Esther put her arms around him.

"I don't believe in sin," she says. "I believe in goodness, and treating people around you well, and justice. A man is not a child or a goat. There is no cruelty nor injustice in loving your own kind. You are not wrong for that."

"You're wrong. You're wrong."

Tristran doesn't move. "It is no offense to decline offers you don't wish to accept, my friend. But neither is it wrong to want happiness. That is all I wish for you. Stop hurting yourself."

He wants to tell them to leave, that their carefree lives are better without his poison, and that he must reject their temptation. But he cannot. He cannot, because he has used God as his reason to commit acts that a philosopher would not pardon. That a priest would detest. That only the Pope allows for darker reasons, for a bigger picture, but what does that matter? His victims suffered. Parsifal was only a boy weeping for a lost love, and Pierre put him in the ground for what? To preserve Boniface's lies for less than a day longer?

The emptiness in his soul where God used to be hurts, _aches_ like hunger pangs, but not so easily remedied. He should be dead. Perhaps he is dead and in purgatory, and this is his punishment, a temptation he must overcome.

Perhaps everything happening to him is very real, and the God he has never seen, only taken on faith, is not.

He lifts his free arm and wraps it around Esther. He can do no more tonight, but she lets him rest his head on her shoulder as he weeps. Tristran's hand is still on Pierre's.

The Brotherhood finds him a fortnight later. Rather, one of them does. Tancrede. Pierre stands, wobbly, and places himself in front of Esther and Tristran. "If you want a fight, I'm afraid I can't give you one." His leg hurts, and he wishes he had his walking stick.

"You were dead," Tancrede says. In his left arm he has a bundle.

Pierre nods and undoes his top to show Tancrede the fresh scarring. "I was not so fortunate as to die." He has no real hope left, no real faith. Nothing to hold on to but his new friends. "If you must kill me, please leave them be. They know nothing." He half-laughs. "I know little enough."

Tancrede gestures away with his head. "Walk with me. I would have words with you alone."

"Please," Esther says. "He cannot fight. He is still injured."

"Then let us hope he says the right words."

"Stay here," Pierre tells her. "I would not repay your kindness by allowing you to put yourselves in danger for me." She sits down, displeased, and Tristran gives Pierre his stick. They walk. "You may take me back to Landry but I can offer nothing." He leans heavily on his staff, stomach and thigh aching.

"Can or will not?"

"Boniface--" Pierre glances over at his friends and lowers his voice. "Boniface has the Grail. What need has he of a cripple who failed his last orders? He thinks me dead and I will let him continue to think it. I am of no use to anyone. Kill me if you must, for retribution, but it will be no fight. I am barely fit to walk."

"You ought to be dead," Tancrede agrees. "That you are not must be God's will, and I owe you a debt. You took a beating to protect me, whatever your motives, so you shall live. If you ever involve yourself in Templar or Papal affairs again, I will kill you."

Pierre nods; he cannot bring himself to thank the man. Tancrede begins to walk away, and Pierre shakes his head. "Tancrede."

The man turns.

"Did we not all believe we were carrying out God's will?"

Tancrede searches his face, and the bundle in his arms begins to fuss. A _baby_? He says nothing, and Tancrede says, "A foundling." Pierre nods again, his eyes cast down, and Tancrede leaves.

Pierre is still alive. He returns to his friends and lets them kiss his cheeks. "Could you ride? We should move on," Esther says.

"In the morning," Pierre promises. He's alive, and everything is a lie, and Tancrede is in the Saracen Brotherhood, and it seems that all anyone does is choose whatever brings them closer to their goals and say God willed it. So, to hell with it all. He kisses Esther. She threads her fingers through his hair. Her mouth is warm and her lips soft on his, but she nips at his lower lip and her grip is strong on his shoulder. He barely remembers the last time he kissed a woman. A girl, when he was fifteen and she the same. This raw affection outside of matrimony, Esther's hungry look that speaks of a stronger desire, whispers that he is hell bound.

Why only half-deserve it, then? Pierre turns to Tristran and reaches for him, tangling his shaking hand in Tristran's tunic and tugging him close. "Are you certain?" Tristran whispers, close enough that Pierre can feel his warm breath. He's beautiful, and Pierre leans in the rest of the way.

Tristran is gentler than Esther, his hand softly caressing Pierre's cheek. If he tries to understand his feelings, tries to fully consider, kissing Tristran is not notably better than kissing Esther, but the guilt and the beauty of defiance fight the pure, tender love in the action, and it's too much, far too much. Pierre thinks he might shake apart. Esther presses herself against his back, grounding him, and his sinful body sinks into the storm of emotions with no further resistance.

They hoist Pierre onto the mare in the morning and set out, skirting Paris completely, passing through smaller towns and heading north. He shaves his beard. He cuts his hair. He hopes it's enough that his enemies will not recognize him too easily. They pretend Pierre is Tristran's brother and avoid drawing attention. Winter is setting in, but Esther is from England and has friends there who will shelter them until spring, she hopes.

The trio reach Esther's friends' home in a near white-out snowstorm, hauling poor Llamrei through drifts past her knees into a small but dry stable near a house only slightly larger than the stable. Esther's friends are named Angharat and Mevanou, and they greet her with kisses. Angharat stirs the kettle over the fire as Mevanou hangs their cloaks up to dry.

"We remember Tristran of course," Mevanou says, "though I welcome the chance to spend more time with you. That, we did not have when you were here last. And who is this?"

"This is Pierre. Tris found him in a ditch," Esther says, slipping an arm around Pierre. "We liked him well enough to keep. He's very mysterious. Is there somewhere he can sit? Bad leg."

Mevanou ushers Pierre to the nicest chair they have, which is nothing compared to Church furniture, but welcome after days on the ground and Llamrei's saddle. He sinks down gratefully and warms his hands by the fire. The women speak French, out of politeness, he thinks. Their accents are strange.

"What were you doing in a ditch?" Angharat asks as she passes around bowls of stew.

"Bleeding to death," Pierre says. There's little worth hiding from these people.

"What? What happened?"

"The Paris Templar Master put his sword through me." It doesn't hurt so much now, the memory of it. Pierre has relegated the pain of his near-death to penance, and he understands penance, even if he hasn't self-mortified since. It's easier to break a habit of hurting your body when your body already hurts all the time. (Though he has not even tried. Somehow his loyalty to God is being supplanted with loyalty to a Jew and an atheistic Cathar. He is weak.)

"Fucking Templars," Angharat says coldly. "Scum."

"He was doing what he had to." Landry surely hated Pierre, but Pierre doesn't hate Landry. Not for his weakness, his adultery, not for turning against the Pope, not even for trying to kill him. At least Landry is a man of action and makes his own choices. "He thought it justice. Perhaps it was."

Tristran looks up from his spot on the floor. "You've never told us the story. You never talk about yourself."

"It's safer for you if I don't."

Esther rolls her eyes. "Excuses, excuses. And what of the Templar that found you? He left."

"I--he owed me a debt. One he would have ignored if he thought I would recover enough to be a danger to his brothers again."

Tristran leans back against Pierre's good leg. "But you're done with all that, whatever it was."

"I've strayed too far." He has. Lying with Esther and Tristran is a sin he's not ready to repent.

Angharat's expression is confused and concerned. "He's a Christian," Esther says, and Angharat winces.

"Get better soon," she says, and Esther swats her.

"Be nice. He's ours."

Pierre is living with a heretic and a Jewish woman and wintering with a pair of women--lovers, no doubt--who are probably heathens, if the trinkets hanging on the wall are anything to go by. The soup is good though, so he stays silent, taking in his situation. Mevanou breaks off pieces of bread to pass around. They don't bother him much through supper. Esther and Tristran know he's slow to speak these days. After the food is finished, Tristran goes to relieve himself and Esther tends to Llamrei, leaving Pierre alone with the pagans. Their home is in a forest clearing, far out of the way of towns and most of the King's wood, so he ought to have guessed they have something to hide, other than a perverse love. (He should try to stop thinking of it as perverse.)

They spring on him immediately. "Why has Esther taken you on?" Mevanou asks. "A Christian? It's not like her."

"Are you putting her in danger?" Angharat demands.

Pierre's defenses raise. "I do not think this is your business."

"It is if we're sheltering you. We saw the Templar armor in your things. Are you a Templar?"

"No, and I never was."

"Did you kill one?"

"Several."

"Oh." Mevanou is surprised. "Killing is no way to live, but I cannot fault you for killing Templars."

They can. They really, truly can. He sees Parsifal's face in his nightmares. "I've left it behind. I have no one else left."

Tristran returns and shoos the women away, pressing a kiss to Pierre's temple. "Are you hounding our pretty French boy?" he challenges.

Pierre has always wanted to do right by God, attend to his duties, manage his perversions and tendency toward pride, but the way his new lovers freely share their feelings and appreciation of his looks fairly ruins that. Pride in his looks is a waste, and yet every time Esther compliments his eyes he feels warm and pleased. "No more than is fair," Pierre says. "You have been kind to me."

"He doesn't offer much," Mevanou says.

Tristran blinks. "Sometimes when you find a man bleeding to death on the side of road, he's not so eager to say what he's survived. Leave off. He's ours, can that not be enough?"

"If I do not speak of it," Pierre says, "it is only because I believe you are safer knowing less about my past." This is only partly a lie. Shame is the other reason.

He is trapped in a half-broken body and it is time, he thinks, to decide what matters. He cannot be weak and follow the easy path because it feels good come spring. He cannot continue to pretend his beliefs are worth nothing. If he is to stay with Esther and Tristran, he must rethink his values. And if he cannot, he must return to Rome and hope for...something. Anything. A pat on the head and bread and wine shoved down his throat, forgiveness for failure, and a scribe or healer job. He studied healing under Draper, a bit. He's not completely incompetent.

Esther comes back in as well and her hand lingers on his shoulder as she passes by. He catches it and kisses her fingers. Her freely given affection is beginning to rub off on him.

The cottage has little in the way of comfort, but there is a bed and space, and it is small enough that the fire keeps them warm through the winter.

The Pope speaks for God. God's representative on Earth.

Or...not. What would Boniface not do to gain power? He wants to use that power to unite Europe and launch a crusade. The Templars started as protectors of pilgrims and became invaders. Killers of heathens and Saracens and...people. Just people. People like Esther and Tristran and Mevanou and Angharat. If the Pope speaks for God and God wants him to launch a crusade, Pierre cannot very well say it is wrong.

But he has been worrying at a thought for some time, the thought that Boniface is not God's representative, and no one is. And that is a terrible thought indeed, because it means, among many other things, that the slaughter of the Cathars was meaningless, blind cruelty, or worse, calculated murder to control everyone else. Pierre does not want that to be true. He does not want to have been following a man, or a line of men, who claim devotion to God but use their office to gain power.

The other thought, the next one, the one that threatens his very being, the one Tristran has already embraced, is too horrible to bear, so he pushes it aside for as long as he can.

Which is not long.

Esther finds him in the stable during an unseasonable snowmelt, clinging to the barn cat and gritting his teeth against the pain. "Love, come inside, let me rub oil on your scars," she offers, and he shakes his head tightly.

"Tell me God is real," he begs, because he is weak. "I can't. I can't."

She kneels beside him and pets the cat's head. "I don't know."

"No, please. You do. You're not like Tris."

"I believe in Him. I don't know if he's real. But I believe it. But I think if He needs to be real for you to believe in something, you may be going about it all wrong."

It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. It hurts too much. "No, but I...I need…" There are tears falling down his cheeks.

"Listen. Have you ever found something in Scripture you hated?"

Yes. Of course. But that was blasphemy. "No, it's the word of God. He's omniscient."

"If you believe that, what's got you so upset?"

He can't answer.

"I find things I hate in our texts. More in yours, but enough in mine. So I don't listen. I don't ignore it, I argue. My people wrestle with angels and argue with God. That's my heritage. That's who we are. Blindly following the orders of a single man who claims to speak for God on Earth sounds to me and mine, frankly insane."

"I think he's a liar," Pierre confesses. "But then why does God not strike him down?"

"Perhaps someone else is meant to."

God is inspiring someone else? "The Templars who defy him, are you saying they are God's chosen?"

Esther pulls a sour face. "The Jews are God's chosen. But that does not mean Christians go to hell, but only that we are chosen to do the work God wants. I don't believe the work is to kill, but I admit, it is easier to say that when we are never in a position to kill others without risking retaliation tenfold." She puts her arms around him. "I don't believe in hell."

It's all very good, but he just needs certainty right now. "But God must be real."

"Tristran doesn't think so. I think...it may not matter."

"But I…" Pierre breaks. He tells her everything. Why he joined the Church. How a Cardinal recruited him to be one of the Pope's soldiers, not a Templar. How he was ordered to kill and he obeyed, watching the light go from the eyes of people who were enemies of the Church but not, perhaps, bad people. How he became so good at lying to himself that infiltrating the Paris temple was almost too easy. How they beat him and ordered his execution when he knew he was innocent of the crime he was accused of.

He might have confessed everything to Landry in exchange for his life, if it had come to that, though that might have been his death as well. How even though he was angry with the Templars for what Gawain and Tancrede put him through, when the moment came, when he was to protect the Pope and the Grail, he hesitated, not wanting to betray his brothers. His brothers who were never his brothers.

How when the arrow hit his leg, he knew he would die there, and his final words to Landry should have been begging for his life but it was too late and he knew it. Then the sword went through him, and he screamed, but no small part of him welcomed the pain, because pain was cleansing, and the sacrifice, because he would be with God, and the end, because life was too terrible to bear altogether, even if some moments were good.

But if Landry had God's blessing, and Pierre's execution at his hands was justice, he would not have gone to heaven at all.

Pierre tells Esther all of this. The cat has long since run away. She is quiet for long minutes. "My darling," she says at last, "God is real, but you should believe no man who claims to speak for him. And that goes for Paul of Tarsus as much as any Pope."

And that hurts, hurts like his life is worthless, but she's right, she must be. She wasn't wrong about his scars either; they do hurt from the change in weather, so he follows her back into the cottage, though Tristran swoops in to steal the vial of oil and massage Pierre's scars with it. He sleeps on the center bedroll tonight and wakes with both sides of his body warm. Life is not so bleak in the morning.

It comes to this: He loves Tristran and Esther, and even though he feels shame about that, he also feels joy and pleasure. Happiness and contentment. Tenderness and affection. All good things. He finds himself quite warm toward Mevanou and Angharat too. Love is good in his new world. And God is real, but shows Himself in Pierre's life through the small, good things. Where Angharat sees her pagan gods in the crocuses peeking through the last of the snow, Pierre sees God. His god. Where Tristran sees an act of kindness meant to strengthen community bonds and improve human society, Pierre sees God. Where Esther sees a place to do justly and love mercy, Pierre sees a place to glorify God. And this is better, because it is harder. The pain and suffering he endured as a holy warrior were easy. Listen to orders and obey. Your righteousness is certain. Your orders are from the Pope. Now he is free to make his own choices, to choose wrong, to fail to live up to what matters. To fail God.

But he loves. He loves, and that is where he grounds himself. He will fail God, and he will try again. There is no certainty, but he decides that is not such a terrible thing.


End file.
